“…the tohu-bohu of inquiries, which have never yet emerged
from the stage of chaos.” -William Gladstone.

Vous avez attaché votre chien au toit de votre voiture?

12 July 2007, 4:31 PM

One criticism of Our Only President back when he was just One Candidate for the Republican Party’s Nomination was that he was ... intellectually incurious. On the other hand, he spoke fluent Spanish! Or, well, no, he didn’t really. Anyway, on the idea that a person must have some intellectual curiosity if he or she is willing to spend a few years learning a language (or, alternately, that the ability to speak more than one language may well spark intellectual curiosity), Your Humble Blogger brings to your attention the list according to Language Log of The Linguistic Abilities of the Presidential Candidates. Mr. Poser’s list of candidates is not identical to mine, but most of the likeliest candidates are there.

One could, probably, write something both witty and biting about American monolingualism, American exceptionalism and how frequently we wind up with a set of candidates who never picked up any other languages. But one is still living out of boxes, isn’t one?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,-Vardibidian.

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